The present disclosure relates to printing from digitally imaged documents including monochromatic text and images and multicolorant text and images and particularly relates to such printing jobs where the majority or bulk of the images are monochromatic with some color images included or interspersed therein. Where print jobs of this nature are to be executed on cut sheet print media, it is generally advantaged to have separate digital image printing engines for printing the multicolorant images and the monochromatic images. Typically, multicolorant digital printing or marking engines are by their very nature slower in production rate than monochromatic digital image marking engines. This presents a problem where a print job requires a low per document cost and/or high rate of production, for example where multiple copies of a document are required that includes some multicolorant images, inasmuch as the production rate is slowed to accommodate the sequencing of the pages having the multicolorant images with the monochromatic image pages.
Furthermore, where both monochromatic and multicolorant digital image marking engines are required for full service printing jobs, it has been desired to not only increase the production rate but to minimize the volume or size of the equipment required and particularly the floor space occupied by the equipment. Typically, the equipment required for digital image printing with a multicolorant and monochromatic marking engine utilizes a sheet stock feeder which feeds sheets to one of the marking engines directly and bypasses the one marking engine for feeding sheets to the other marking engine and requires delays in the transport of the monochromatic sheets in order to properly sequence the pages of the document for those having color images. In addition, the processing time for cut sheet print jobs including color and monochromatic images is delayed as a result of the time required for cycling up and cycling down of the slower multicolorant marking engines. Thus, it has been desired to provide a way or means of increasing the production rate of print jobs having both monochromatic and color image pages and to minimize the size of the floor space requirement of the equipment required for processing such print jobs with cut sheet stock print media.